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Philipp Frank's Austro-American Logical Empiricism PHILIPP FRANK’S AUSTRO-AMERICAN LOGICAL EMPIRICISM Thomas Mormann The aim of this article is to discuss the “Austro-American” logical empiricism proposed by physicist and philosopher Philipp Frank, particularly his interpretation of Carnap’s Aufbau, which he considered the charter of logical empiricism as a scientific world con- ception. According to Frank, the Aufbau was to be read as an integration of the ideas of Mach and Poincaré, leading eventually to a pragmatism quite similar to that of the American pragmatist William James. Relying on this peculiar interpretation, Frank in- tended to bring about a rapprochement between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle in exile and American pragmatism. In the course of this project, in the last years of his career, Frank outlined a comprehensive, socially engaged philosophy of science that could serve as a “link between science and philosophy.” 1. Introduction In the past 3 or 4 decades, quite a few philosophers and historians of philos- ophy of science have engaged in dissecting the various currents of epistemology and philosophy of science that informed the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle. In this endeavor, neo-Kantian influences were initially distinguished from philosophical doctrines attributed to a specific “Austrian philosophy” whose or- igins are traced to nineteenth-century philosopher-scientists such as Bolzano, Brentano, and Mach. The first to propose the thesis that there was a genuine Austrian philosophical tradition in the larger context of German-speaking phi- losophy was Otto Neurath. In The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Contact Thomas Mormann at Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Avenida de Tolosa 70, 20080 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain (ylxmomot @ehu.es). I am grateful to two anonymous HOPOS referees for their extremely helpful comments, sugges- tions, and criticisms on two earlier versions of this article. They helped improve considerably the final version of this article. Of course, I am responsible for any remaining errors and other shortcomings. HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, vol. 7 (Spring 2017). 2152-5188/2017/0701-0003$10.00. © 2017 by the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. Electronically published January 18, 2017. 000 This content downloaded from 158.227.191.004 on April 09, 2017 03:07:55 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). HOPOS | Frank’s Austro-American Logical Empiricism Circle he characterized Austrian philosophy as anti-Kantian, science oriented, clinging to the spirit of enlightenment, empiricist, and particularly interested in questions of logic and language (Neurath 1929). Later, Neurath’s thesis was elaborated by Rudolf Haller and others and is now known as the Neurath-Haller thesis (see Neurath 1929; Haller 1991; Uebel 2003). Although many members of the Vienna Circle, particularly Neurath and Philipp Frank, can be characterized as Austrian philosophers in the sense of the Neurath-Haller thesis, there were others who could not so easily be subsumed under the Austrian label. Among them, Schlick and Carnap were the most im- portant examples. The aim of this article is to discuss the bold attempt of the Austrian philosopher Frank to read Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt as a work in the tradition of Austrian philosophy in the sense of the Neurath-Haller thesis (Carnap 1928/1967, henceforth Aufbau). For some time, it has been nearly unanimously agreed that the Aufbau is deeply marked by neo-Kantian, Kantian, and other non-Austrian influences. This is not surprising; Carnap began his philosophical career in Jena as a neo- Kantian, writing his dissertation under the direction of the neo-Kantian Bruno Bauch. More importantly, the first version of the Aufbau was written in the years 1922–25, when he lived as an “independent scholar” in Buchenbach near Frei- burg in Germany.1 Thus, the first version of the Aufbau was written before Carnap came to Vienna. Hence, what is surprising, at least in light of the Neurath-Haller thesis, is that the Austrians welcomed the Aufbau as congenial with the Circle’s allegedly Austrian philosophy. Indeed, at least for a certain time, the Aufbau became the philosophical reference point of the Austrian “scientific world conception.” This point was emphatically formulated by Frank:2 “Carnap gave the new philosophy [i.e., log- ical empiricism of the Vienna Circle] its ‘classical shape.’ He coined many of its terms and phrases and endowed it with subtlety and simplicity. In . The Logical Structure of the World [sic] the integration of Mach and Poincaré was actually performed in a coherent system of conspicuous logical simplicity. Our Viennese group saw in Carnap’s work the synthesis that we had advocated for many years” (1949, 33). Carnap himself did not pay much attention to the originality of Austrian philosophy.3 In Logical Syntax of Language (Carnap 1937a), as well as in later texts after he had left Europe, Austrian philosophers 1. When Carnap lived in Buchenbach, he came into contact with Husserl’s phenomenology. The influence of Husserl’s phenomenology on the Aufbau is well confirmed (see Mayer 1991). 2. Frank did not take Carnap’s non-Austrian philosophical heritage seriously, debunking it as “some sentimental ties to traditional German philosophy” (1949, 34). 3. He never dealt with Bolzano, and Brentano is mentioned in the Aufbau only once as the founder of “the traditional theory of intentionality” (Carnap 1928/1967, sec. 164). 000 This content downloaded from 158.227.191.004 on April 09, 2017 03:07:55 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Mormann |SPRING2017 were not mentioned at all (with the exception of Wittgenstein and Popper).4 Even for the Aufbau, he did not get it exactly right when he retrospectively de- scribed Mach’s role for this work as follows: The choice of a phenomenalist basis [for the constitution system mainly dealt with in the Aufbau5] was influenced by some radical empiricist or positivist German [sic] philosophers of the end of the last century whom I had studied with interest, in the first place Ernst Mach, and further Richard Avenarius, Richard von Schubert-Soldern, and Wilhelm Schuppe. For the constitution of scientific concepts on the phenomenal basis I found fruitful suggestions in the works of Mach and Avenarius, and, above all, in the logical constructions made by Russell. (Carnap 1963, 18) He was apparently unaware of the importance of distinguishing between Aus- trian and German philosophy, drawing his inspiration from wherever he could find it, whether Austrian, German, or British sources.6 Striking evidence for this eclectic attitude was his confession that the Aufbau’s constitution theory had two very different sources: “Two entirely different and frequently hostile phil- osophical positions have the merit of both having discovered the necessary basis of the constitution system. Positivism has emphasized that the only material of cognition consists in the undigested experientially given. It is here that we have to look for the basic elements of the constitution system. Transcendental ideal- ism, especially the neo-Kantian school (Rickert, Cassirer, Bauch) has justly em- phasized that these elements do not suffice. Order concepts, our basic relations, must be added” (Carnap 1928/1967, sec. 75). Although Carnap acknowledged having been influenced by Poincaré, he con- sidered Russell’sinfluence far more important, as will be discussed in some detail in section 3. This evidence does not imply that Frank’s Austrian reading of the Aufbau as an “integration of Mach and Poincaré” was mistaken. Carnap might have arrived at some sort of “Austrian philosophy” independently, starting from a “German” philosophical base. Nevertheless, the Aufbau, at least prima facie, 4. Further evidence that Mach only played a minor role for Carnap is that he was never mentioned in Carnap’s pre-Aufbau articles, with one or two exceptions that lack importance. With the shifting of emphasis toward logic and language from the thirties onward, Machian ingredients in Carnap’s em- piricism faded away. 5. In the Aufbau, he was more critical of Mach’s phenomenalism, noting that a Machian consti- tution system did not satisfy the requirement of “epistemic primacy” in contrast to the gestaltist system based on Elementarerlebnisse (see Carnap 1928/1967, sec. 54). 6. In fact, Schubert-Soldern may be characterized as an Austrian philosopher (born in Prague). Avenarius is sometimes considered a “German-Swiss” thinker. 000 This content downloaded from 158.227.191.004 on April 09, 2017 03:07:55 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). HOPOS | Frank’s Austro-American Logical Empiricism poses a problem for the Neurath-Haller thesis because it challenges the con- traposition of German neo-Kantian and Austrian anti-Kantian philosophy. The Aufbau demonstrates that Kant’s shadow loomed larger than many Austrian philosophers might have thought. Frank, as an Austrian philosopher par excellence, never acknowledged that Kant and other German philosophical traditions had any importance for the Aufbau. As he showed in his Historical Background, he wholeheartedly sub- scribed to Neurath’s bold thesis that “things happen in Austria parallel
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